I don't know how anyone can call it a Bitcoin competitor.
Instead of a proof of work decentralized consensus ripple depends on a consensus of _trusted servers_. In Bitcoin language ripple is distributed but not decentralized.
Then multiply that out by the fact that its native currency XRP was all pre-created and given to the founders and their org... people like to call Bitcoin a ponzi scheme, but policies like this make me wonder if Ripple isn't a joke designed to point out the comparative equality Bitcoin provides.
It might be more accurate to call it a paypal competitor but it retains the Bitcoin scalability challenge of requiring global synchronization, so its unlikely to be a great one.
It is positioned to compete with other payment systems. As for scalability, it uses data structures specifically designed for rapid synchronization. But you're absolutely right that scaling it to thousands of transactions per second will be a challenge.
Instead of a proof of work decentralized consensus ripple depends on a consensus of _trusted servers_. In Bitcoin language ripple is distributed but not decentralized.
Then multiply that out by the fact that its native currency XRP was all pre-created and given to the founders and their org... people like to call Bitcoin a ponzi scheme, but policies like this make me wonder if Ripple isn't a joke designed to point out the comparative equality Bitcoin provides.
It might be more accurate to call it a paypal competitor but it retains the Bitcoin scalability challenge of requiring global synchronization, so its unlikely to be a great one.